Alexander Carrick was born in 1882 in Musselburgh, Scotland. His father was a blacksmith. In 1897 he enrolled as a student at Edinburgh College of Art and was apprenticed as a stone mason working in the yard of William Birnie Rhind. He won the Queen’s Prize permitting him to study for two years at South Kensington under Professor Édouard Lantéri. Upon his return to Edinburgh, he spent two years working under J Pittendrigh MacGillivray. In the years before the Great War, Carrick was a regular exhibitor at the RSA exhibitions, his works including A Boy Putting a Stone, A Girl Skipping and Saint Cecilia. He also worked on prestigious construction projects such as the Usher Hall and the Scotsman Building, both in Edinburgh; restoration works at Eilean Donan Castle and St Magnus’ Cathedral in Kirkwall; and he also carried out extensive work at Saint Conan’s Kirk at Loch Awe. Whilst at the Edinburgh College of Art, Carrick met Janet Ferguson MacGregor, who was studying painting there and they were married in 1914. Carrick was appointed to the teaching staff of Edinburgh College of Art that same year. In 1916 he enlisted in the Royal Artillery and served in Belgium. That year, he modelled his figure of an artilleryman lifting a shell The Gunner, which was exhibited at that year’s RSA exhibition in Edinburgh. In 1918 Carrick was elected ARSA. After the war, he quickly re-established his yard in Edinburgh and again began exhibiting at the RSA with Jock and With Bayonet and Bomb. During the period 1920-26 Carrick was heavily involved in war memorial work. He preferred working in freestone, especially Doddington stone quarried in the Cheviots. Memorials featuring his carved sculptures include those at Lochawe, Killin, Oban, St Margaret’s Hope, Kinghorn, Newburgh and Auchtermuchty. He later received a commission from the South African Scottish Regimental Association to carve a copy of his Killin soldier for their memorial, which stands in Burghers Park at Pretoria. Carrick also executed figures in bronze, including the figures of soldiers for the Dornoch, Forres, Blairgowrie and Walkerburn war memorials, and allegorical figures including Winged Victory for Berwick-upon-Tweed and Justice Guiding Valour for the Fraserburgh War Memorial. He also found the time to execute other commissions in the early 1920’s including carving the stone figures The Leopard, The Vulture, and The Kangaroo for the Animal Wall extension at Cardiff Castle and the tomb featuring the recumbent figure of Walter Campbell of Lochawe in Saint Conan’s Kirk. Two hundred of Scotland’s most skilled craftsmen were employed to work on the Scottish National War Memorial in Edinburgh Castle and Carrick was responsible for the small carved virtues of Courage and Justice, set in the niches above the entrance, and the bronze figurative panels commemorating the Royal Engineers and Royal Artillery in the East Chapel. In 1929 Carrick’s figure of Sir William Wallace was also unveiled in Edinburgh Castle. When Tait McKenzie died in 1938, his family approached Carrick to sculpt a suitable memorial. He replied that McKenzie’s memorial was his work, and then proposed that he simply carve McKenzie’s monogram with which he signed many of his works onto a small piece of Craigleith stone left over from the Scottish American Memorial and set it into the wall of St Cuthbert’s Church, Edinburgh, to mark the last resting place of his heart. Carrick undertook many smaller works including renovations and repairs at George Heriot’s School in Edinburgh, Pollok House in Glasgow, and Dunnotar Castle. In the late 1930’s he carried out all of the work on Saint Andrew’s House, the government buildings in Edinburgh, to the designs of William Reid Dick. Although never formally trained as a teacher, in 1928 Carrick was appointed head of the sculpture department at Edinburgh College of Art and was by all accounts, a natural. Among his students would be Sir Robert Lorimer’s son Hew, Phyllis Bone, Scott Sutherland and Tom Whalen. With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, construction work dried up and conscription claimed his students. Carrick took retirement and died at Galashiels in 1966. Website at www.alexandercarrick.webeden.co.uk/